You will find an overview of the structure of negotiation, recommendations on strategy, learning about the interests of other key players in influencing them to accept your objectives and course of action is their best alternative. Readers are not left to divine how to accomplish that these tasks, but are carefully guided through the methods and skills needed for their achievement.

Influencing others, for example, is one of those key goal areas that requires the employment of a multiplicity of goals for achievement. Dr. Watkins explores the importance of framing and reframing in the process and presents a variety of techniques to accomplish it. The author begins by examining the importance of risk and loss aversion as a critical power and then provides the reader with a solid tutorial on “commonly used framing techniques.” Among these, you will find such workhorses as invocations to “the common good,” increasing concerns about loss and risk, “enlarging the pie,” and that critical essential of providing a script for others to assist in the task of influencing along with several other techniques.

Shaping the Game is very well documented. Readers will find well crafted and carefully annotated footnotes collected at the close of the work which are a valuable bonus. True to his own advice on the danger of one size fits all approaches, Dr. Watkins has expanded the viewer’s horizon with a “Recommended Reading” section which readers are bound to determine is a strong addition to their encounter with the subject.

The author has provided solid recommendations for the individual works, the design, and values of a broad and thoughtful reading program in negotiation.

This is a book of interest to all negotiators.

Highly Recommended

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